This young family is happy to leave the refugee camp but are also worried about being able to adjust to live in the U.S. They have lived 20 years with no rights, and don't know if they can manage being free. DP
By Jesse Wright, Special for USA TODAY
MAE SOT, Thailand — The bus rumbled to life, and Hsar Say took one last look at the only home he'd known for the past 20 years. The lime green rice paddies, the banana trees, the bamboo huts he shared with the other refugees — they were all part of his past.
In a few hours, Say would board a plane to America with his wife and two kids. Whether that was a good thing, he wasn't sure.
"Basically I think (America) will be better than a refugee camp," he said. "In a refugee camp, you have no rights. You are put in a cage. It's illegal to travel outside the camp, so it's very different from being a human."
On the other hand, Say was a very important man — a teacher — among the other Burmese refugees at the Mae La camp in western Thailand. His wife taught adult literacy classes. He confessed to being "a little afraid" that in America, they'd end up like his wife's cousin, who moved to Kentucky and toils in a clothing store packing boxes.
"Maybe in America, I can work at a job to help other people," he said hopefully. "I like social work."
Such are the dilemmas facing Say and the 15,000 other refugees from Burma who have arrived in the USA since 2006, making them the biggest single group of refugees to enter the country during that time, according to the State Department.
Those who have escaped from Burma, also known as Myanmar, are in many respects a special case: They have fled a military regime that the Bush administration had singled out as one of the most brutal in the world. A cyclone in May killed at least 85,000 people and sent even more Burmese streaming across the border into Thailand, where there are about 100,000 refugees packed into nine camps.
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